When Your Ambition Starts to Exhaust You

Earlier in your career, you volunteered for hard projects, stayed late, and prided yourself on delivering. It worked. You rose through the ranks, built a reputation for getting things done and became a leader. That was then. Now, the ambition that once energized you exhausts you. And the standards you set feel like a treadmill you can’t step off. It’s a common pattern among top performers, according to Mary Anderson, a clinical psychologist and the author of The Happy High Achiever. In her practice, she sees it again and again: ambitious, accomplished people at the peak of their careers who’ve checked every box and feel hollow. “They’re not enjoying their excellence,” she says. “Instead, they’re overwhelmed, exhausted, and marinating in cortisol.” For many, this is when the crisis hits, notes Amy Wrzesniewski, an organizational psychologist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “If your success has always depended on enormous effort and energy, and suddenly you can’t sustain that anymore, it’s terrifying,” she says. “But instead of beating yourself up about what used to work, put that energy toward understanding why things have changed.” Start by asking yourself these five questions. 1. Is this an engine problem or a fuel problem? The drop in your ambition has a cause, and it helps to think about it in two ways: your engine is wearing down, or your fuel has changed. An engine problem means the machinery (in other words your body) is older. You still love the work, but recovery takes longer, and the horsepower isn’t there. “When you were younger, you could run on little sleep and grab whatever was quick to eat,” says Anderson. “You can operate on fumes early in your career, but that catches up with you.” A fuel problem is different. The engine parts are fine, but what’s powering it has changed. You can’t manufacture the enthusiasm that used to come naturally. “The fuel isn’t as sparky anymore,” says Wrzesniewski. You start to realize, “I actually don’t feel about this the way I used to.” The diagnosis matters because the solutions are different. 2. Am I chasing the next achievement, or doing work that matters to me? Wrzesniewski’s research identifies three orientations people have toward work. Some see it as a job, mainly a financial exchange. Others see it as a career, focused on advancement and promotion. Still others view work as a calling: inherently meaningful and fulfilling. She finds that people who see work as a job or career report lower satisfaction than those who see it as a calling. And if you’ve been driven by achievement and forward movement, that orientation weakens as you plateau or run out of rungs to climb. The focus changes: “How do I feel about this work? Is it meaningful?” Wrzesniewski says. People who view their work as a calling are less vulnerable to these feelings. “The point was always loving this work,” she explains. “Either it’s fun or challenging, or it’s contributing to something you care about. That tie sustains people better.” You don’t have to abandon ambition. But you may need to redirect it toward the work itself, not the next promotion. 3. Whose standards am I living by? Somewhere along the way, you may have outsourced your definition of success, says Anderson. Your industry’s standards became yours. Your firm’s metrics became your benchmarks. You’re living by expectations you absorbed years ago and never questioned. “If you make your internal worth beholden to external validation, you will live with chronic anxiety.” One source of that anxiety: You often internalize unrealistic expectations from demanding clients and bosses, then hold yourself to a bar that’s higher than what anyone actually requires. “They expect excellence from you, and that’s real pressure,” Anderson says. “But don’t conflate excellence with perfection.” Of course, your accomplishments matter. “But you are not your bank account. You are not your awards.” Your worth shouldn’t rise and fall with quarterly results. “At some point, you need to define success on your own terms.” 4. When am I most energized at work—and what would it take to build my role around that? Regardless of whether it’s an engine or fuel issue, you need to identify what’s worth your energy. Maybe it’s when you’re mentoring a young colleague through a tough problem. Maybe it’s the strategic thinking, not the execution. Or it’s the client-facing work, not the internal politics. Researchers call this job crafting—reshaping your job to make it more engaging by emphasizing the parts of it that feel meaningful. “Sit down and think about what your work consists of, what you tolerate, and where you have degrees of freedom to move toward tasks that feed you,” Wrzesniewski says. By now, you might have more latitude than you realize. Wrzesniewski suggests figuring out ways to delegate the work that depletes you and lean into what energizes you. “There’s often a natural shift at this career stage toward mentoring, advisory work, or projects where your impact is on developing others rather than just delivering outcomes.” Anderson frames it as energy management. “If you want to keep achieving at a high level, you have to protect your energy,” she says. “Be strategic about where you spend it by focusing on what matters.” 5. If I kept only what energizes me, would there be enough to stay? In some cases, the answer comes quickly. “You might already know, on some level and in living color, that it’s time to leave your job,” says Wrzesniewski. Other times, the answer is less dramatic: more rest, clearer boundaries, or job crafting can be enough. But if what energizes you is only a sliver of your day, and everything else drains you, that’s not sustainable. That’s when you need to start exploring what comes next. The shift doesn’t have to mean walking away from your expertise. Consulting, board positions, and teaching allow you to stay involved while doing different work, notes Wrzesniewski. “There’s a reason why there’s so much interest in encore careers.” This transition may be the first time in your career that you’ve asked yourself what you want, rather than what you’re supposed to want, says Anderson. “You’ve built your reputation meeting high expectations,” she says. “But you get to decide what excellence looks like for you now.”

When Your Ambition Starts to Exhaust You

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